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Topic: Scraped my blues (Read 2818 times)

Well after 30 days it was time to scrape the mould off my blues. A few concerns I have though are..

1. if I keep doing this every 20-30 days for 90 days my cheese will end up being half their thickness as there doesnt seem to be a way to not help scraping a layer of cheese with the mould?

2. Ive had these at 10C and 95% humidity and they feel very sticky and tacky to touch. They are the consistency of Philadelphia spreadable cream cheese. Is this okay and are they supposed to feel like this or is my humidity up a bit too high.

Humidity is too high, once blue has estabilished (first few days) you can and should reduce RH to 85-88%, otherwise linnens and other surface yeast can grow. espacially if doing a rindless blue. (where blue is inhibited on the surface).

Id say let them dry off and get the humidity down. The scaping should not reduce the rind back to a white form but remove some of the yellow slime other, as you said - you could be left with very little cheese

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Amatuar winemaker,baker, cook and musician not in any particular order.

Im struggling to get the humidty down on these even with the lid cracked open. Ive pulled them out of the cave and let them dry on the bench for an hour but they are still wet and tacky to touch.

Any other suggestions for how I can get these to dry out a bit? I cant leave the lid open in my cheese cave because Im also trying to bring down the humidity on the cams I have in there and Im concerned with both maturation boxes in the same fridge, with the lids open, I will end up cross contamanating them.

I have had blues and cams in the "cave" at the same time with their lids cracked open about 2 inches and didn't have a problem.I made sure I handled the cams first then washed my hands with soap and vinegar before touching the blues.Leaving them out shouldn't be an issue as long as the temperature isn't too high. (If you are getting similar weather to us it shouldn't be a problem)

Also, with my stilton, I had a B Linens hitch a ride and it made the ends a little wet/slimy.

I left them out overnight and they are a lot drier. Still a bi tacky to touch but not slippery and wet like they were. Ive kept them in the fridge with the lid on the maturation box completly open to see if they dry out further.

Well these blues are around 2 months old now. I had a calendar reminder set to scrape them today but they are still fairly clean on top after scraping the mould off about 30 days ago. No real blue mould has grown back on the surface yet, just a few patches here and there. They seem a lot drier but my concern is they are very, slimy, slippery but also sticky to touch. (if that makes sense)

That could be Geo. Geo often makes a slimy and tacky feel on the surface. I don't have blues experience so don't have answers for you. I DO think your thread title would be a good name for a song in the blues style.